


bluebloods

by erzi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M, does making out w ur crush when he's possessed count as mildly dubious consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-20 16:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20678054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: The tension in Shuuichi's silence is taut as an arrow at the ready, quivering with anticipation, and perhaps some regret: once the arrow is loosened, it cannot be reclaimed. "I," he says, with great exertion, and likely a grimace, "need your help."A smile stretches like incoming danger on Seiji's face. "Sorry, could you repeat that?""You heard me perfectly fine and we both know it!" Ah, that petulance of his. The teen Seiji had once known flashes in his memory, all scowls and bent heads and darting eyes. Shuuichi huffs, releasing the tension Seiji effortlessly composes in him. "I think someone I work with is possessed."





	bluebloods

"_You_," Shuuichi says, tinny over the line and yet without losing any of his accusation, "are not an easy person to get ahold of."

Seiji smiles down at the slim black phone in his hand despite awareness Shuuichi cannot see his expression. Nevertheless, the smile drips into his words. "I do my best."

"How are you going to get any clients that way?"

He glances at Shuuichi's name on the screen and at the call's time steadily ticking away beneath it. White against black. "We've been talking for fifteen seconds and counting, Natori-san – this at your calling – and you're insulting me already. Impressive."

Shuuichi draws an almost soundless breath in. Were it not for the closeness of the speaker to his lips, Seiji would have missed it. But never the frustration. That was in every of their interactions. "I... apologize," he says, as if it's being pulled from under his skin.

Now there's a surprise, for Shuuichi to recognize what he has done wrong and taking it back. It can only mean one thing. "What were you going to ask of me?"

The tension in Shuuichi's silence is taut as an arrow at the ready, quivering with anticipation, and perhaps some regret: once the arrow is loosened, it cannot be reclaimed. "I," he says, with great exertion, and likely a grimace, "need your help."

A smile stretches like incoming danger on Seiji's face. "Sorry, could you repeat that?"

"You heard me perfectly fine and we both know it!" Ah, that petulance of his. The teen Seiji had once known flashes in his memory, all scowls and bent heads and darting eyes. Shuuichi huffs, releasing the tension Seiji effortlessly composes in him. "I think someone I work with is possessed."

His eyebrows go up, the covered one crinkling his eyepatch. "This is a bold claim, Natori-san. What makes you believe it?"

"She's changed a lot. I know actors and actresses can let fame get to their heads, but her change was too sudden. It doesn't go with who she was. And this happened shortly after we filmed in a forest – she could have accidentally disturbed a youkai or something."

"There are reasons beyond youkai for change." He'd said it for the truth and common sense of it, but then he remembers, unbidden, the changes in his life always at mortal hands. Others'. His own.

From the pause on Shuuichi's end, he also remembers. "I thought I saw her eyes burning," he says instead. "There's not a normal reason for that."

"A trick of your brain?"

"Maybe, but with her behavior... I don't know, something's not right. I wanted a second opinion before I try anything, which is"–here, he stumbles, mumbles–"where I need your help."

Seiji hums, leaning against the wooden wall of his study, clan paperwork at the table ignored. "How am I supposed to go about that? I can't imagine a phone diagnosis is what you had in mind."

"We finished shooting recently, and the wrap-up party is coming up. I want– I'd like you to– if you can–" He can barely get the words out; they weaken as they spin on themselves, and it takes Seiji's imperial concentration to not laugh or interrupt, because this is something he has to hear. "Come with me." The tension returns: the arrow has been loosed, but will it hit the target?

Yes. What fool would Seiji be to let this opportunity pass? Shuuichi requesting his help and his company. He will not-so-subtly gloat about this for months. "When will this party be?" he asks, as if he won't arrange the whole of his schedule to accommodate it.

"This Friday, seven in the evening. It's at a hotel with invitation only so I'll–" Shuuichi chokes on his words again, what he needs to say not wanting to come. "I'll pick you up at six, and you'll be my–" He pauses so long it would be easy to think the connection has been lost. It hasn't. Not the phone call's, at least.

Natori Shuuichi, suit tailored to his slim figure, gliding up to the yesteryear architecture of the Matoba clan in a car produced so recently the seats still squeak. Natori Shuuichi, who keeps his distance from Seiji like a hoarded secret, coming to him, needing him at his side.

Seiji examines the ends of his hair, turning a lock between thumb and forefinger. He could use a trim, for the health of his hair. "Are you allowed to bring a date? And a man, at that?"

"Your excuse," Shuuichi says, loudly, "is that you always wanted to go to one. A wrap-up party. Because you're not a woman, people aren't going to think we're involved if you're with me. I mean, you're going to be with me, but not _with_ me. Keep your distance."

So it's a command now.

"We're going to pretend we're long-time friends," Shuuichi continues, "and that this is a favor to you, I guess."

"You 'guess'?" Seiji can't help it, this prodding at all weaknesses Shuuichi shows. "This is a fairly poor excuse, regardless. Why wait until now to bring me along if we're such good friends?" And he says that with the words strange on his tongue, because this is a language he'd been fluent in and then crumbled to ignorance. Yet he crudely summons it in this ambiguous present.

Shuuichi, of course, is immediately defensive. "I really doubt anyone asks that much about it. I'll think of something, but that's not the important part, it's finding out if my co-star is possessed. I don't want to assume and act hastily but it turns out she's not."

"And if she is?"

Another pause – but contemplative. "I'll handle it somehow."

'I.' Seiji is going along to corroborate what seem to be already stalwart beliefs. He glances at his kimono, wrinkled at his lap, and smooths it with utmost care. "I'll go."

"Really?" The distrust is there, with an unseen narrowing of his eyes.

Seiji stares flatly at the opposite wall. "Why would you ask for my help and doubt my answer, Natori-san? Yes, I'll really go. You need someone to hold you back from the irrational decisions you make when convinced of something. So, Friday at six. Until then." He hangs up, the beep hanging like a punctuation mark.

This is foolhardy. There are as many cracks in this last-minute plan of Shuuichi's as there are in old sidewalks. He is moving as his heart dictates, not his head.

And if Seiji doesn't look out for him, who will?

He fixes his posture, resuming his paperwork. 

* * *

Shuuichi hadn't even told him how to dress. A plea as a call and that had been all, with no attention to the finer details of the plan, just assurance that it could happen. Seiji could call and ask. But he won't. If his decision is the wrong one let it be Shuuichi's fault for not clarifying.

Though he doubts he can go wrong with a suit. One he uses for the most important political clients. It's imported from Europe, sewn like poetry, black as night. For his tie, a color to go with his eyes. Eye in the singular, rather. On the mirror, he looks at his right eye, suspicious under white cloth with an arcane design. Perhaps he could explain this as eccentric fashion? No, he's not pretending to be someone in Shuuichi's world. Why would a regular person wear an eyepatch like this?

A knock at the door, useless because Nanase steps in before Seiji assents. She looks at the clothes he's picked out and hung over his arm.

"I wasn't aware we had an exorcism arranged," she says.

"We don't. This attire is for a personal matter."

She blinks deeply. "You don't mean a date, do you?"

"Not the kind you're thinking of," he evenly replies. He turns to his reflection, that eyepatch having obscured his face for so long sometimes he wonders if anyone remembers who – how – he was before it. "Natori asked me to help him in what might be a possession."

"He did?" That smirk of hers could rival Seiji's.

"Yes," he says, ignoring it, and for safety chooses words not unusual for him. "You know how naive he is still."

"Hmm."

"I'm coming to an event of his to verify if the person he believes possessed truly is."

"On your own? If he's right, this could be dangerous."

He offers her a sharp smile. "Have more faith in me, Nanase. You wound me."

She shakes her head. "It's not your power I doubt. It's that you won't do anything stupid with him around."

His smile sharpens, cutting even him. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"You know the answer." She moves on, somehow. "I came to tell you we've been hired by a local politician to see if his sudden bad luck is due to a curse."

"When will that be?"

"Friday–"

"You're in charge of it."

She blinks at him again.

He holds up his arm with the clothes slung over it. "I have plans then." He walks past her. "If you'll excuse me, I have an eyepatch to order on short notice."

* * *

It is his money, reputation, and threat of a smile that get him a common black eyepatch embroidered with his normal one's symbols in thread that matches his tie. It covers his eye socket, but his scar's jagged white tissue sneaks above and under the eyepatch, an invitation to be asked of his injury. With the kinds of people that populate Shuuichi's industry, Seiji is certain he'll be asked about it, and his grin returns. He'll lie, obviously, but that he has ridiculous possibilities at his disposal with Shuuichi unable to counter them is titillating.

Thursday night, and he has all he needs for tomorrow, but he can't rid himself of a tiny emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He does not know what he is missing, though, and goes to sleep with that unease.

By morning, it hasn't disappeared. Strange. He isn't sick, is he? Even if he is, it's too late to rescind the offer.

The manor is mostly empty, as Nanase has taken the best people with her on the politician job. Shiki and servants and less-experienced exorcists flit about as Seiji paces the halls, as if chasing the reason for his unease, as if passing by the time with distaste.

The sun has predictably risen and set throughout the history of itself, but it picks today to languish on its short autumnal descent. A perfect, burning height at noon. A lower height at three, the light less radiant. Softening at five; Seiji changes then, washed and prim. Five-thirty, and the softening is deeper. He sits in a study room, watching the sun's shadow lengthen on the untended grass.

"Matoba-sama," comes a voice behind the paper door, "a guest is here for you. It is–"

"–Natori Shuuichi," he says, standing. "Thank you; I am aware."

Under the red foliage swept high along the walkway, leaning on a gleaming car, picking at a golden cufflink. The suit would be presumed for black were the last rays of sun not sliding off it, rich blue alight. At the sound of Seiji's approach, he picks his head up – and he's smoothed back his hair, he's gone without his glasses. "Matoba-san," Shuuichi says, as way of acknowledgment and likely as thanks.

Seiji quirks a thin smile, opening the door to his side as Shuuichi rounds the car to drive. It is as new as Seiji expected. Unused, practically.

Shuuichi steps in and turns on the ignition, the motor purring low. The gravel and grass are bumpy beneath the tires as he drives out. They are the only sounds that surround them.

"What a shiny car," Seiji says, when turning over the thought on his head grows tiresome. As does the silence.

"It's a rental," Shuuichi says, staring firmly at the road. "I don't have space for a car."

"Ah." He'd made a mistake regarding Shuuichi.

Shuuichi gives him only a very brief consideration, then he is focused on the road once more.

"What?" Seiji says, folding his hands on his lap. "This is me, I assure you. I do own modern clothing."

He sees Shuuichi set his jaw just as his lizard makes its way to it, coming out of wherever it was hiding. "You... look nice."

Trees pass by: growing in the car's nearing, shrinking as the car moves forward, then disappearing entirely as the forest gives way to the city glittering in monochromes. Seiji keeps his eye to the windshield as if he was the one driving. "Thank you. Likewise."

The tires rumble.

The sky has darkened but no stars come through; the pollution in the city is too great for them. He is vaguely familiar with this area, having walked it for more prestigious, civilized assignments. He'd never thought much of it until now, with expensive cars chauffeured by grim-faced suited men, parked by starchly uniformed valets, the elite who owned the cars gliding out of them with disdainful grace. This is another kind of power and influence, a kind built not from history but modernity. People want the rich few on their screens and glossy magazine covers living lives watched vicariously. All that glamour, as pretty as it is empty, and yet so desired. He glances at Shuuichi.

"What?" Shuuichi says, not having looked at him to confirm his eye was on him. He must have felt it as he would the cut of his smile.

A smile he cannot conjure now. "Nothing."

They are at their hotel; Shuuichi slows as he eases into the parking garage. He politely declines the valet service and finds them a spot. He powers the car down, its background hum deadened, and the lights overhead sleepily blink on.

"So," Shuuichi says, hands curled on the steering wheel. He drums his fingers on them, once. "Thanks for agreeing to this."

"I hope you came up with a plan better than my visual confirmation of this woman's possession. Possessions are difficult to ascertain by that alone, even for me."

"Her name," Shuuichi says, pointedly, "is Yamazaki Hana. Before her likely possession, she was nice. Cooperative. Kept to herself when we were on break. Then maybe a week ago, she got really demanding and haughty. What you think actresses are like, basically. People thought it was her getting too comfortable with the business, but her personality change was too... abrupt. Instead of personal change, which you can predict, it's like she's someone else. And as I told you already, this happened a day or so after a forest shoot. Youkai like forests." He splays his fingers on the steering wheel. "One of the last scenes we filmed was in front of a fireplace. When she turned to the fire, I could see it in her eyes. It wasn't a reflection, though. It was like the fire was coming from her. No one said anything, not even when reviewing it on the camera, so with all that I thought it might have been a youkai.

"We obviously can't throw a charm paper at her because if we're wrong there's no way to play that off. I'm going to draw the charm on my hand, instead. I want you to observe her and tell me if you think something is wrong with her. If you do, I'll find a way to touch my palm to her. You'll be somewhere close by, but not obvious enough that you're spying on us, and later tell me if she reacts to the charm."

Seiji glances again at Shuuichi's hands, the palms down, and pictures one pressed to some woman's cheek as he gives her a dazzle of a smile. "Inane," Seiji says, looking up at Shuuichi. "This plan is inane."

"Do you have a better idea?!"

"Do nothing. If her behavior worsens, people closer to her will notice and take better action."

"But if this is a youkai, nothing they do will help! I doubt any of them think youkai exist, much less that they can take over people." He puts his hands palm up. No ink mars them yet; no one's skin has touched them. "We have the literal power to do something. So we will." He narrows his eyes at Seiji. "If you're backing out, fine, but I won't drive you back."

The blackness of the parking lot, built parasitically to the hotel, is uncomfortably still, stiff as the inside of the car itself diffused mutely in the small yellow lights overhead. "I'm not backing out." He fiddles with the door lock, an impatient _clack-clack-clack_. "Let's go."

"Hold on, I have to draw the charm." Shuuichi unpockets a brush from the inside of his jacket, drawing an intricate symbol on his left palm, down to the smallest of the characters surrounding the circle, with no help whatsoever. He puts the brush away and unlocks the car. Seiji steps out, careful in closing the door where Shuuichi throws it behind him, a merry _beep_ assuring him the car is locked. As Seiji rounds the car to go to the hotel's entrance, Shuuichi grabs him by the elbow.

"Wait," he says, immediately pulling his hand back, the touch brief and unexpected by both of them: Seiji blinks, Shuuichi looks to his hand as if only now aware it is his. He clears his throat. "Remember, you're here because you're my... friend." However stilted the pause had been, he does a remarkable job of maintaining a neutral expression. Practice for the performance they're about to begin.

"Yes," Seiji affirms, crossing his arms, hand over that touched elbow. "As a favor. And did you ever come up with an excuse as to why you waited this long to take me?"

Shuuichi fixes his already-perfect hair. "No. I was hoping it didn't come up."

"You are a terrible planner."

"I'll think of something if it does! Have a little faith in me." The words echo in this space, concrete and shadows, sound and memory. Shuuichi, realizing what he had said, looks at the floor and walks away, left hand protectively inside his jacket.

Seiji, wordlessly considering him and his words, follows.

At this parking garage, the entrance to the hotel is lit by harsh white lights that melt to buttery yellow inside beyond a second set of glass doors. They go from the darkness to the sudden light, cool air and music winding through, and then to the hotel proper where the music is displaced by guests' and employees' chatter. A thin group of people are making their way toward the ballroom, advertised as being to the left by a plaque on the wall. Below it is a sign informing all that the ballroom is reserved for the movie's cast and crew. They follow the sign, coming to the ballroom, closed off by rich red cloth draped between silver posts. An attendant waits outside the closed doors, inspecting the invitation of the couple in front, a woman clinging to the arm of a man who had brandished the invitation. The attendant nods, offers them good wishes, and opens the doors for them.

Their turn. But before they move, Seiji, bothered by an inexplicable twinge, mutters, "I'm not holding on to you like that."

Shuuichi is spluttering incoherences at Seiji that he can fit together only because he can guess what Shuuichi is trying to flusteredly reply: that he wasn't expecting that to begin with, that he didn't want it, that he wouldn't be allowed such affection anyway, that he doesn't even like him as a person. Further flustered by the shaking of his confidence by such an offhanded remark, Shuuichi turns away, briskly walking up to the attendant and almost shoving the invitation over.

"Natori-san, welcome," the attendant says, glancing at the paper after his greeting. Shuuichi is recognizable, his pretty face plastered on billboards on every other city block, but the attendant does his job. He barely looks at Seiji. "We hope you and your date have a good evening."

Seiji is certain Shuuichi is about to argue that he is not his date, so with a hand to the small of Shuuichi's back he pushes him inside before he worsens things. When the doors heavily close, Shuuichi whirls to him, pink on the tips of his ears.

Seiji still doesn't allow him to speak, cutting in with, "Where is the woman?"

The sudden question unrelated to the attendant's mistake brings confusion to Shuuichi's face. But he quickly recovers. He looks around the room. "There, in the red dress with the trail. And please call her Yamazaki-san. Don't be rude."

She's easy to find. Most guests have chosen classy colors for this party, but this woman – Yamazaki-san – is like the flame of a candle in a dark room. There is a subtle sheen to her dress that, at the right angles, catches the chandelier light with star-like brilliance. Her make-up too is warm, and her face, in a perpetual smile, glows. She's surrounded by a few people basking in her glory and doesn't see the two of them staring at her in judgment, divine in its nature.

"You said that behavior is unusual for her?" Seiji asks.

"Yes. She's a good actress, but she used to be pretty shy. Having this many people around her would have made her nervous." Just then, laughter erupts around her, whatever whimsy she had said proving effective. Shuuichi's lip curves down. "The Yamazaki-san I knew wouldn't have been able to do that so effortlessly."

"You knew her very well, didn't you," Seiji says, mouth barely moving, watching the woman and her admirers.

Shuuichi bristles. "Are you accusing me of something? I spent months working with her; obviously I got to know her personality."

"Just as they did yours?"

His mouth is open, but nothing comes out. Sullenly, Shuuichi closes it, scowling at the floor, arms crossed.

"Natori-san, the ink–" Seiji says, hand going to Shuuichi's left arm, when someone else calls for him. Shuuichi moves toward the voice, and Seiji's arm brushes air.

Thoughtless as Shuuichi is, he's uncrossed his arms and revealed the mark on his hand as he shakes the hand of– whoever this is, in gaudy clothes and oversized sunglasses and veneer grin. The director?

As Seiji cautiously approaches, keeping to the distance Shuuichi wanted, their conversation makes it clear this is one of the producers, whose insult of a grin on his unnaturally tight skin renders him inhuman. Despite his sunglasses, Seiji can feel his fly-like eyes swivel to him as he gets nearer, and the grin is rigid.

"Who's this?" he asks Shuuichi, brusquely motioning to Seiji with his head as if Seiji cannot answer for himself.

So he does, with a grin to match the man's, but every tooth flashed is purposefully a threat. "Matsuo Kiyoshi. I've known Shuuichi-san for quite some time, and yet he'd never brought me to one of these events. Can you believe him?" He laughs lightly, tossing his head aside to catch the flurry of emotions barely restrained in Shuuichi's face.

"Are you interested in film?" the producer asks, grin stuck to him, the corners twitching along with his brow in nervousness. "Is that why you've come?"

The dreaded question, and directed at him rather than Shuuichi. Seiji had not prepared an answer yet something smooths out of him. "Not at all. But friends should let friends into their lives, or else they're not friends at all. If you'll excuse me." He heads for the refreshment and food table. He's nibbling on something at the end of a plastic toothpick when Shuuichi catches up and hisses at him.

"What was that?"

"Acting." He bites his teeth down on the appetizer, swallowing without chewing. "You should know what that is."

He puts a hand to his forehead, closing his eyes. "I don't know why I asked you along."

"Are you going to make your way to Yamaha-san or are you going to whine all night at whatever I do?"

"It's _Yamazaki-san_!"

"Yes, it _is_ me!" titters a third voice. Yamazaki-san walks to them, on her own now, but she turns heads as she does.

Right away, Shuuichi is all smiles. "You have incredible hearing, Yamazaki-san. Good evening." He swoops annoyingly dramatically to grab her hand – and it's his left hand, Seiji realizes, as Shuuichi's palm cups the woman's, small and delicate in his hold and now brushed by his lips.

"Natori-san, you tease," she says, a trilled sigh and laugh, and from the corner of his eye Seiji sees Shuuichi straighten, sees her coyly draw her creamy hand away.

Her face; Seiji had missed her face, her reaction. He hurriedly flits his eye to her to see if he can catch the remnants of her initial reaction, and there is nothing in her face but that brilliant smile. Though she does tuck her hand behind her. And then she is meeting his eye, and how hers smolder, smoke over a fire long burning.

"I don't believe we've met," she says. "I'm–"

"Yamazaki Hana," he says. "I know. You are a celebrity, are you not? No need for condescension. I'm Matsuo Kiyoshi."

She laughs. "Where did you find him, Natori-san?"

"We go back a while," Shuuichi says, eyes flickering over to Seiji's and then a distant spot, corner of his mouth taut, describing a wordless _Tell me what you saw in a bit_.

"You should have brought him to me sooner," she says, and something in her eyes glows, embers picking up heat after near-extinction.

"He's a busy person, and not every director is keen on bringing in outsiders. Things worked out this time."

He's going to have to construct a story he's not prepared to tell at the rate of her polite inquisitions, so Seiji cuts in. "Shuuichi-san, I'm hungry. Tell me what sweets are good here."

Shuuichi realizes his intent here, giving him a small nod. He tips his head to her. "Excuse us, Yamazaki-san. Being friends with someone this long makes them treat you this brazenly."

Her laugh fades out as they walk away from her. They're loitering by a desserts table, Shuuichi pretending in his motions and chipper expression that they are talking about the sweets. His words are anything but that.

"Did you sense anything supernatural about her?" he says, pointing out a tiramisu.

Seiji shakes his head. "Maybe."

Shuuichi's façade falters. "Then why'd you shake your head?"

"That was at the tiramisu." He grabs a mille feuille, dainty in its plate, and with one finger wipes away the striped icing. "I didn't sense anything, but I did see something. Something like a fire in her eyes, as you told me you thought you'd seen. I also believe the charm on your palm irritated her, as she put her hand behind her back." He conveniently leaves out that he hadn't looked at her face to know how she'd really reacted.

Shuuichi exhales, a steady stream that flattens his stomach. "I don't know whether to be relieved or worried."

"Relieved. Exorcisms are what we do. Have you forgotten that, dawdling in this world too long?" He licks the cream off his finger.

Shuuichi's mouth twitches, trying not to pout, and his eyes once and only once stray to Seiji's finger. "How are we going to manage that here? I can't exactly ask Yamazaki-san to step into a banishment circle. The youkai is controlling her and would immediately find out what we were trying to do. We need to catch the youkai by surprise."

Seiji knows what he should do; it's clear as glass in his mind because it is a tactic they've both deployed in exorcisms, but here it has different implications. He opens his mouth and it comes out with a dreadful calm he doesn't feel. "Get her into a room."

"Huh?"

"Get a room for the night," he says, speech coming of its own accord, jaw creaking like a hinge. "Set up the circle on the floor on paper like you would for any other occasion."

"No, I got that, but that's suspicious, dragging her into a room."

Seiji takes a long, long inhale, unfulfilling despite its length, and gives Shuuichi a glare so flat the world is compressed to two dimensions and it nauseates him.

Now Shuuichi understands. His eyes widen; pink rises on his face. "I can't do that! I don't want to, either!"

Odd how some of the tension in his jaw melts. "That's the best idea I have."

"There has to be something else." He paces in a tight circle. "That would look bad for me and her."

Loathe as he is to continue this conversation, it truly is the only solution he can think of. Few people could say they didn't find Shuuichi magnetic. "Flirt with her; gauge her reaction. If it seems she's going along with it, this will work. I'll book the room so it isn't traced to you. Money can be used to hush anyone who sees, but I can get a room in the higher levels where less people roam."

Shuuichi winces and his lip turns down minutely. "You're– why are you so eager to do that?"

"To do what, give you the help you asked me for?" It's out of his mouth, but it doesn't feel like it is. The faint bitterness on his tongue is the only proof he has he'd said anything.

Shuuichi's reply does not make it out of his open mouth. Just as well, as Seiji keeps talking.

"I'll go set the circle up. Give me paper for it; I don't have much with me."

Shuuichi pulls out the car keys from his pocket. "In the trunk."

Seiji takes the keys. "Try not to do anything rash during my absence." He spins on his heel, finding a small pleasure in the annoyed _o__w_ from his long hair slapping Shuuichi's cheek. His contented smirk soon falls – the ballroom's din behind him, the mellow hotel music filling in, the warm lights above mocking – as he leaves for the cold of the garage. Opening the trunk, finding a disordered array of exorcism tools that get a chuckle from him, he grabs a stack of paper he folds and tucks inside his jacket, then heads for the front desk.

There is a suite available on the top floor, he is told. One of the more luxurious options, with its own kitchenette, a loft overlooking the city, and other extravagances Seiji doesn't pay much attention to. It will serve to fool the woman into thinking Shuuichi is trying to– trying to–

He gives a short, quiet exhale, shuffling his wallet from inside his jacket, paying with cash. The receptionist gives him a mildly inquisitive look that he would carry money so frivolously, and Seiji answers it with a smile as false as the name he gives. It gets him the key all the same, a sleek card he pockets with a glib _Thank you_.

The suite is indeed beautiful. Glittering and modern, minimalism in muted colors. It wouldn't be a terrible place to spend the night with someone.

But he is not the one who is meant to be here.

His mouth is a line thin as paper, the very paper he sets up and paints a suppressing circle onto, overlaid with the symbols for banishment. Ridding people of youkai within them is dangerous; to do it as the person is awake could kill them in spirit. The woman will fall to a dreamless sleep, the youkai the only thing awake in the body, trapped in the unconscious host's confines – and then, with the proper incantation, it can be exorcised.

_The rest is on you, Shuuichi-san_, Seiji thinks as he finishes, not sparing a glance back at his calligraphy.

He returns to the ballroom, where dinner is commencing at the round tables pushed to the room's sides. Shuuichi waves at him from his table, a chair at his side. Seiji goes to him, ignoring the other two at the table: what's-her-name and an even bigger nobody.

"I'm good now," Seiji says, sitting and sliding the room key into Shuuichi's hand, fingertips brushes of their own where he touches Shuuichi's skin, withdrawing too soon.

Shuuichi nods, but the woman feels this is an invitation for her to join this conversation. "Wherever did you run off to, Matsuo-san? You missed all the wonderful speeches! Without you here, Natori-san seemed glum even as he accepted the cast and crew's thanks."

"I'm sure he was," Seiji says before Shuuichi can fluster a denial. "We've known each other for so long it's difficult to fathom being too far from each other."

She gasps, delicately, a hand covering her pink mouth.

"It's not like that!" Shuuichi says, coloring a red close to her attire. "You'll find that Mato– Matsuo-san here says things to rile people up."

"Not 'people.' More you," Seiji says, sipping the goblet of water a waiter pours him. It's cold and hurts his teeth; it leaves condensation at his fingertips. He sets the goblet down but doesn't let it go, fingers cradling the stem. He lets the cold seep into him, becoming him, exposed again in the form of his smile. "If anyone's been on Natori-san's mind, it's been you, Yamazaki-san."

But for a glint of _What are you getting me into__?_ that goes across Shuuichi's eyes, he gives no indication the lie had affected him.

Seiji tips his head ever slightly to the blushing Yamazaki-san, in a wordless response: _You need to flirt with her for our plan to work_.

Shuuichi understands it, thankfully, and he begins his role. Laughing lightly, body toward her, using the color just receding from his face to his advantage, he says, "That I can't really deny."

"You are a _tease_," she says, uncovering her mouth to place her hand at his elbow.

The glass squeaks between Seiji's fingers as he twists it, this way and that. _This will be easy to do_, he thinks, _when she is already this willing to toss herself at him_. The water glides around, never spilling, despite the numbness at his fingers. _I'm sure she's thankful for the possession, if it's made her this bold in her pursuit of her infatuation_.

Food is brought out, a welcome respite. Shuuichi had not told him what would be served, or that there would be anything at all – unsurprising, given how late his call had been – but they are dishes Seiji likes, and he cannot complain about them. It goes for the food, at the least, because Shuuichi's continued sweet-talk with the woman elicit Seiji's thinly veiled insults and ersatz smiles and kicks under the table. It's immature and annoys Shuuichi, but the woman thinks it all amusing, her chair nearing Shuuichi's by the minute. By dessert, Shuuichi whispers directly to her ear, and Seiji might as well not be there.

He can imagine the sugar Shuuichi is spinning, tooth-rotting and mass-produced and still how people love it. Reciting them for the lines they are.

_Have you ever meant anything you said, Shuuichi-san?_ Seiji asks him in the haven of his own mind.

"Have you?" Shuuichi asks, with his own voice, and Seiji's eyes widen as far as they go, even his maimed one, hidden but stretching out the scarred skin uncomfortably.

"Excuse me?" he asks, lids snapping halfway down warily.

"I said you haven't had tried the dessert yet, have you?" Shuuichi says, confused.

Seiji's thoughts had drifted; he hadn't heard the full thing and assumed what he had heard was because he'd seen into his soul. He frowns – at himself, for being fool enough to think that could happen. "I haven't. The sweet appetizers earlier were fine enough for tonight."

"You're missing out, Matsuo-san," Yamazaki-san says, pink tongue flicking on a spoon, eyes going to Shuuichi. "They're simply amazing."

"I'll take your word for it," he says, with a fleeting, polite smile that twists his gut to form.

The food is being swept away as music plays from speakers unseen. People amble to chat with others that had been seated elsewhere, or to the dance floor, or to the bar, or to places more dark and discreet. Shuuichi has helped Yamazaki-san from her seat, and his hand has stayed holding hers like it is crafted from porcelain, and his smile so like an actor's in that she loves it; it convinces even Seiji, if that twist in his gut is any indication. Shuuichi has not moved his lips from her ear, continuing to fill it with cotton candy words that she adores and seeks more of. She's leaning into his touch as he guides her out of the ballroom.

That is when Seiji glances away, spotting an empty chair at the bar that he claims – quickly, but not so much his hurry to be elsewhere is obvious. The bar seat is stiff, and despite his attempted nonchalance, he sits on it forcefully, his spine ramming onto the backs of his eyes. The bartender asks him what he'd like.

"The most expensive sake you have," he says. It's the only drink he's ever tempted, and if Shuuichi is getting an extravagant suite, he deserves to have an extravagant drink.

The bartender nods, soon placing a glossy bottle and cup to him, pouring out the drink with grace as fluid as the sake itself, ripples settling so clearly into the cup it appears empty. He sips it, the alcohol strong on his tongue, stronger down his throat. It had very much not been empty. He sets the cup down, stifling a cough by pressing his tongue to his palate, by constricting the back of his throat like he's shoved his own hand to crush his windpipe.

It makes him quite aware of his mouth and everything in it, and then in turn he thinks of Shuuichi whispering to the woman – how his mouth had moved to form the syllables shaping the emptiness of his words hollowing out her ear. How now he must be saying more and yet how it means nothing, those things to get her inside the room. How he attests his nothingness by pressing his mouth to hers.

The bottle glugs as Seiji pours himself another drink. In one go he swallows it and he does not mask his cough, though he does place a hand to his forehead, the sake thumping through him. He is not a strong drinker; reading the alcohol percentage etched on the bottle, he notes it's quite high. It's all he tastes, really, not the ostentatious undertones the bottle boasts of.

He's frowning at it when his phone buzzes, muffled by his suit's fine cloth. He pulls it out and sees it's Shuuichi calling. Three more times he lets it buzz before answering, languidly, "Are you quite done?"

Silence.

His frown turns to the phone. This isn't Shuuichi's usual silence, sullen and simmering with things he longs to say but knows better than to let out. By now he would have not restrained himself anymore and muttered a more tepid rendition of his true thoughts, but the silence persists, it lives, breathing in rasps surrounded by shadows.

Something is wrong. "Natori-san?" Seiji tries, putting his weight onto an outstretched leg.

"Help."

Seiji flies out of the ballroom, the bartender yelling about his tab, the people he avoids – or doesn't manage to – grumbling about his rudeness, but he cares not for it any more than he would have had he strolled by instead. An elevator dings nearby, and he speeds up, pushing himself in as people try to walk out, jamming the button to the top floor.

The elevator ride is endless, and the moment the doors open he rushes through, fourth room to the right, and pauses. Remembers he doesn't have the room key anymore. Breathes in. Knocks once, austerely. Realizes if Shuuichi needed help, he is probably not going to be able to open the door.

Muttering his misfortune, Seiji taps his bottom lip, wondering if he can ask for a replacement card without eyebrows being raised because he certainly cannot kick this door down, and then the door swings inward, Shuuichi propping all his weight against it.

"It's done," he says, effort on his sweat-sheened brow.

"What was your call about?" Seiji asks, stepping closer to him, extending a hand for support.

"I thought I wouldn't be able to do it, but I did." He straightens, rubbing his eyes.

Useless hand of his. Seiji drops it as he walks past Shuuichi. He had moved the woman to a sofa, where she sleeps. The papers he'd arranged himself are disheveled, the ink on them scorched. Useless.

He studies Shuuichi for any weaknesses he does not know already. Those are the only ones he finds. His stubbornness, in helping Seiji pick up the mess he'd made with no mention of his evident exhaustion. His kindness, in putting another pillow under the woman's head; in writing an apologetic, if falsified, note about a last-minute thing he had to leave for. He places it on the table nearest her and then stretches, joints popping like old wood alight, arms reaching out out out, impossibly, with a wide, pleased smile. Then he blinks to Seiji, limbs fallen back by his sides, blinking as if none of that had happened.

Seiji draws his eyebrows together. "Are you well, Natori-san?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Just a bit tired from the exorcism." He glances at the woman, and Seiji's eye follows his.

_How does he see her?_ he wonders.

"Let's go home," Shuuichi says, waving him out as he walks to the door. Where he stops. "I mean, our respective homes."

"Yes," Seiji says, with a tug of his lip that's more to the side than up, "that was implied."

He'd kept the car keys; he gives them to Shuuichi when they're by the car and Shuuichi's frantically patting his pockets for something he doesn't have, to Seiji's amusement. It earns him another scowl – mild, this one, not simmering with that aversion not uncommon on Shuuichi's face, so familiar that Seiji could see it behind closed eyes, vivid as life. It makes Seiji laugh quietly, this meager excuse for a scowl, as he goes to the passenger seat.

"Whatever," Shuuichi mumbles, starting up the car, yellow lights overhead mellowing the pink on his ears.

Night in the city is unlike the night at Seiji's secluded manor guarded by forest. The city's lights – in businesses, cars, billboards, streetlamps – are bright enough to draw the illusion the darkness does not exist. It's blinding, and Seiji squints, wondering how anyone can live in it. He turns to Shuuichi, adored and advertised by such brilliance, and sees he is glowing as if the sun has spread itself under his skin. And this is no trick of the light or foolish dream; Shuuichi genuinely _glows_, retaining it for a flicker as they are plummeted in a tunnel's shadows before it, too, is extinguished like it had never been.

"Pull over," Seiji says, carefully toneless.

"What? We haven't even left the city yet."

"Pull over, Natori-san."

Shuuichi sighs. "Fine, as soon as we're out of the tunnel."

They reemerge to the city, lights dimmer at its edges, and a placid steady clicking tuts in the silence as Shuuichi finds a curb to park by, hazard lights intermittently flashing in the dark.

"What is it?" Shuuichi asks, twisting in his seat to face Seiji. The same Shuuichi he's seen, rarely this close, for the better part of his life.

Maybe he _had_ imagined it.

_No_, a surer voice in him tells him – the voice of a leader who'd far surpassed the expectations of his inherent power and that which he'd made for himself.

"Do excuse me," he mutters, pressing a hand to Shuuichi's forehead.

The apology does nothing; Shuuichi starts at his touch, yelping, "What are you doing?!"

Seiji does not reply. He is only his hand, taking in the warmth of this other person created by blood pumped with every pulse of his heart, each a victory and testament to his life. His other hand touches his own forehead, and now his being is taut between his two arms, finding the balance between both of their body temperatures.

Shuuichi is a tad warmer. Nothing alarming. Perhaps, as he had said, fatigue from the exorcism.

Seiji puts his hands on his lap. "You seemed sick," he explains.

Fussing with his hair, Shuuichi brings his bangs down from their perfect brushing to fall over his forehead. "Like I said, I'm a bit tired, but otherwise I'm fine. I don't feel feverish."

"Hmm," Seiji says, and shoots his hand up to the sensitive spot in Shuuichi where jaw meets neck. A pulse point, knowledge he'd somehow picked up somewhere, and the flutter at his fingertips lurches to mania. He presses down just a little firmer, tipping Shuuichi to him, asking soft as a snake slithering on grass, "Natori-san, what happened during the exorcism?"

However insignificant in duration it is, there is a stutter in Shuuichi's heartbeat, panic palpable. Seiji watches his throat work as he swallows; he feels the heat at his fingers flare and abate. "Like any other exorcism," Shuuichi says, calmer than his heartbeat indicates. "She walked inside over the paper, I said the spell, there was–" He doesn't pause as much as all sound is robbed of him, abruptly, and his eyes in this dim yellow light are unfocused as though in a dream, and Seiji is about to grip him and ask what is wrong when Shuuichi continues, "I saw light from the circles, like always. It blinded me and I collapsed. I woke up to find Yamazaki-san on the floor, and I felt dizzy. I called you. But I felt better and was able to confirm Yamazaki-san was asleep, so I put her on the sofa. You showed up after that. Anything else you want to know?"

"No," he says after a pause, withdrawing his hand, facing forward.

There is something wrong. Maybe not wrong, but different; misgivings gnaw at his mind. Rather than speaking them and be mistaken, he retains them.

Had something happened between Shuuichi and that woman before she was exorcised?

The mush in Seiji's head is eaten away by the acid in his blood.

Shuuichi starts up the car again. True night creeps in here where nothing of the city can taint it. On these dirt roads sending rumbles in place of conversation, the car's headlights cut through the thick black, the monstrous silhouettes of overgrown trees relieved – if weakly, if briefly – before they drive on, the night behind them swallowing them whole again.

Circles of light bob in the distance. The manor's lanterns have been lit, papery fires tamed, dotting the estate to cast it in pale amber. They do well to illuminate the way, but they do not hold back all of the forest's stagnant shadows.

Where the manor's driveway becomes the walkway, Shuuichi parks.

He's opened his mouth to speak but has not yet had the chance to make a single coherent sound when he chokes on nothing but air, thrown violently forward in their car's perfect stillness with only his seat belt restraining him.

Seiji immediately unfastens his and Shuuichi's seat belts, grabbing Shuuichi by his shoulders, bringing him to his chest while asking, as futile as it is instinctual, what is wrong. His gut had been correct; something had occurred to Shuuichi, but he cannot know what with Shuuichi hacking and rasping, one hand tearing at his hair as the other clenches over his heart.

"I'll get you out and call a doctor," Seiji says over Shuuichi's pain, "I'm exiting the car to pull you out." Talking calmly, describing his actions, like he is bargaining with an evil; but it is just Shuuichi, overtaken by– something, and he is surely presently deaf to all but whatever afflicts him, whatever is making him rigid as a tree and screaming like one being axed. Seiji quickly steps out of the car, calling over his shoulder for human servants and shiki. Two shiki curl up from the black ground and a stream of humans hurry from the manor, rushing to help.

He puts his hands under Shuuichi's arms and begins to haul him out.

And he's uncomfortably hot to the touch. Were it not for his suit, Seiji might have stolen back his hands in fear of blisters reddening his hands. But he hauls him out, a servant helping. In the dim lantern light Seiji gets Shuuichi to look at him, his eyes squinting open as his screams subside, and Seiji sees embers in their depths, an unnatural glimmer like the woman's.

_He's possessed_, Seiji realizes, and the thought itself possesses him. He finds physical strength deep in him; faster he walks, the servant struggling to keep up, Shuuichi limp between them. He gives orders when inside the manor: a spare room purified and warded, a chair carved from cypress wood, rice straw ropes, talisman paper, brushes and ink. Servants scurry to retrieve what their master has asked for, and if they question why he has asked for holy objects as he half-carries an old acquaintance to his manor, they do not voice it.

By the time the room has been set up, Shuuichi has passed out. His breathing is rapid, shallow; his skin burning; his eyelids fluttering as whatever he sees beyond them passes him by.

Seiji asks for absolutely no interruptions unless he specifically calls for help; not even shiki does he let in, instead ordering them to guard the shoji door he firmly closes.

He sits Shuuichi on the chair, grabbing a rope. "This is for your own good, Shuuichi-san," he mumbles, tying his arms, legs, and chest to keep him on the chair. He spreads the paper in a circle around the chair, then drawing a suppressing circle on it. He forgoes the banishment characters. With Shuuichi unconscious, ridding the youkai within him could disturb his own spirit fighting off the ghostly sickness.

For now, there is nothing to do but wait for either Shuuichi or the youkai to wake up.

Seiji sticks his head out the door, asking for a change of clothes, one of his usual eyepatches, and for a few scrolls from their library, all dutifully brought. Before sleep can claim him, he will read. Read and prepare. 

* * *

Rustling wakes Seiji. He does not go from the ambiguity of dreams to reality's harshness in a muddy trawl; he opens his paper-dry eyes and immediately, crisply is cognizant of what has led him here, leaning against a wall in a disused room, Shuuichi bound and seated at its center. But the rustling – it did not come from Shuuichi as he'd thought; he continues to sit propped by nothing but the very ropes that tie him. His head is lolled down.

Seiji shifts his position, the rustle come again and from quite close. Ah. He tugs on his sleeve as he stands, massaging knots away from his spine and neck. Though he had slept, he had not rested. Part of it is simply the late time he'd finally succumbed to sleep after hours reading old scrolls on possessions. But another undeniable part is the weight, scant as it is, of who is possessed.

"Why am I tied up?"

Seiji's hand stays put on his neck as he turns to Shuuichi, face obscured as he inspects the ropes. He does not respond. Not yet. Silence on his part will get more words from Shuuichi – or the youkai that's possessed him.

"Is this your idea of a joke," Shuuichi says, and as he picks his head up a gleam like a torch waved in the night passes over his eyes, "Matsuo-san?"

Seiji's fingers stiffen on his neck. "Hmm," he says, the corner of his mouth lifting as he brings his arm ever carefully down, showing nothing of its corpse-like rigidity or cold. He walks to Shuuichi, one deliberate stride at a time, and bends at the waist to his level while keeping his one-eyed gaze locked on his. "Perhaps, my dear youkai."

To the fiend's credit, the expression it puts on Shuuichi changes to confusion without a stutter. "_Youkai_? What are you talking about?"

"My name," Seiji quietly says, "is not Matsuo."

The fire smoldering in the depths of Shuuichi's eyes goes mad, and his lip curls back in irritation. "I've been discovered so soon. 'Matsuo,'" not-Shuuichi chuckles to itself, shaking the head. "I should have realized you gave a false name. Who but the poet Basho could bear it?" Not-Shuuichi looks at him, with those eyes Seiji has long been scrutinized by, but these are strange, twin pools of fresh blood that soak his very soul. "So who are you, in truth?"

He meets those strange eyes, vile as they are. He will not bow before a beast, much less one cloaked in Shuuichi's skin. "Matoba Seiji, head of the Matoba clan."

"A _Matoba_!" not-Shuuichi throws its head back in laughter. "I should have realized this, too, from that eyepatch of yours!" It examines Shuuichi's body as best it can given its binding. "And I have possessed a certain Natori, I believe you called him. Is this a Natori as in the exorcist clan?"

"Yes."

Its laugh is like an animal's; to hear it from Shuuichi makes Seiji's skin crawl. "What luck I have!"

"Who are you and why have you possessed him?" Seiji asks, putting a hand on not-Shuuichi's knee. To bend the youkai to his will while it inhabits another, he must use his bodiliness to his advantage. First, his questions will be answered. Then the exorcism can be conducted. But of course, if the youkai aimed to deceive him of its identity, if it can talk so advancedly, it is capable of predicting Seiji's schemes. And so he must think of this, too.

The youkai itself is likely aware of this little game. It is an acceptable conclusion from its behavior and from the smirk it sullies Shuuichi's face with. "Why would I not possess him when he all but offered himself to me, a mighty kitsune?" it says, eyes flaring.

Under his eyepatch, Seiji's scarred eye twinges, a memory of pain suddenly flourishing. "What do you mean?"

"A shame, really, as the element of surprise was to his favor. I would have been exorcised were it not for the circle's impropriety. Is his skill so poor? Or did he _want_ to be possessed?"

Seiji steals his hand back as if the kitsune has spurted its flames. He hastily straightens.

Not-Shuuichi takes note of his reaction with a smile like molten gold. "While I was possessing the woman, I do recall you left the ballroom for some time. Was it perhaps you who set up the circle?"

He'd not checked they'd been drawn right. He'd assumed they were; he is the head of the Matoba clan, and he can draw suppressing and banishment circles in his sleep.

Could he draw them with his mind perturbed by Natori Shuuichi?

Seiji grabs Shuuichi's chin, tugging him up as he leans down, the tips of their eyelashes close to brushing.

"Upset by your mistake?" not-Shuuichi says through a mocking smile.

"Natori-san, if you can hear me, blink twice."

Not-Shuuichi barks a laugh. "That's not really going to work. I am in control of his body."

"Then where is his consciousness?"

"Repressed."

"Where?"

"I know not. He is him and I am me; I know where I exist, but I cannot possibly know where he exists without ceasing to be me. I only feel him as a presence squirming to regain its body."

"From where?" he says, undisturbed and cold as stone, fingers digging onto Shuuichi's skin.

"Everywhere at once. Aggressive, aren't you?" Its curl of a smile is more distorted yet by Seiji clutching its face. "I can sense this man has a complicated view of you. His spirit's thrashing when I woke and saw you grew quite manic. Like he wanted you to leave and come at once. Could it be the same for you?"

Seiji lets him go again.

The thing has the gall to laugh. "Oh, humans! You and your relationships. How amusing to watch they are." It raises a shoulder, wiping away a tear on it. "I find you two very interesting," it says, facing Seiji, "so much that I will allow this Natori to briefly speak with you. I wonder what he will say?"

Seiji eyes it mistrustfully.

"Before that, however," the kitsune continues, its grin terrible, "you should sit on my lap."

The only thing moving are his lips. "I will do no such thing. Allow Natori-san to speak."

"If you sit on my lap." The grin could rip Shuuichi's face apart. "I am _so_ curious as to what he will do."

Though Seiji knows Shuuichi would not succumb to a youkai that easily, he must ensure he exists somewhere. Seiji breathes in methodically, deep from his stomach: one, two, three, four, five seconds in through his nose; hold; one, two, three, four, five seconds out through his mouth. All in silence, so unmoving the kitsune with Shuuichi's eyes looks curiously at him, like it is him who has been possessed.

He just might be, as he places himself at the very edge of Shuuichi's knees.

Not-Shuuichi laughs. "You're barely here at all. That won't do."

He grits his teeth, the pressure coursing to his temple, to the backs of his eyes. "This or nothing."

"You're the one who wanted to speak with him; you are in no position to negotiate." It bends its head forward. "You move closer, or nothing."

His teeth might break from the force clamping down on them, but he slowly inches further onto Shuuichi's lap, forcing himself to meet the kitsune's condescending look. He is the heir to the Matoba clan. He will not be at the mercy of a youkai; he will take its games for himself. He's close enough to Shuuichi his side is to his ribs; the kitsune smirks, surprised but apparently pleased Seiji has obeyed. _But you cannot expect me to be your plaything_, he thinks, wrapping his arms nonchalantly around Shuuichi's neck, focusing on those eyes that are not his, mindful this may be his body but it is not him; this is nothing, it means nothing.

"Eager, are you?" not-Shuuichi asks, a gleam in the eyes and teeth.

Seiji feels something stir beneath him.

Not-Shuuichi cackles as no human could. "Do not fret. So is he. I've no control over that, I assure you."

His fingers woven at the back of Shuuichi's head tighten from exasperation – from the kitsune, from his own traitorous body's response to Shuuichi, mercifully hidden by his robes – that he does not present on his face. "Natori. Now."

"Yes, yes. But understand I will remain watching in the shadows – if you try to exorcise me then, I will burn this man's soul to ashes."

_See_, Seiji dryly thinks, _it's discovered my game_. "I understand."

Shuuichi's eyes, fire possessed, dwindle to embers. A trace of the gaze Seiji is familiar with meets his, blinking rapidly.

"Matoba-san, what are you _doing_?!" screeches what is most absolutely Natori Shuuichi himself as he struggles against the ropes. "Get off me; don't listen to that– that _thing_!"

"It's an intelligent creature. Diplomacy was needed," he says, unwinding his arms and standing. He clasps his hands in front of him to appear poised, to hide whatever might peek through his clothing.

He'd bound Shuuichi's legs, and try as Shuuichi might to cross his legs to hide what is between there, he can't. His face, turned away, is the red of a burn. "What do you want?" he says.

That curt question stuns Seiji so much that a laugh makes it out of him. "You're possessed. What do you think? I'm trying to free you in a way that won't kill you."

Shuuichi's eyes swirl in fiery madness; he lurches forward but is held fast by the ropes, and the rictus on his face can only be the kitsune. "Human," it snarls, "you forgot yourself."

"You said nothing of my exorcising you while _you__'re_ in control of his body," Seiji smoothly says.

"Because it is obvious I've no desire for it! Besides," it says, smothering its ire with a smoky smile, "exorcising while the host is not in control is dangerous. You surely know this. Or must I remind you my death would irreparably damage this Natori's dormant soul?"

"He is not dormant. You said so yourself. He's fighting you."

Shuuichi's sneer is feral, a beast he is not himself. "A matter of semantics. He is not in control of his body, as much as he struggles to be, and it is that which will harm him should you try to harm me. But." It pauses, settling Shuuichi's back flat against the chair, running the pink of Shuuichi's tongue across the bottom lip, eyes half-lidded. "Why would you?"

"Why would I not?" Seiji says, but a few breaths too late for it to be as believable. "You're a youkai. I was born to rid the world of your ilk."

"Because I don his body and his voice but I am not _him_, with all the past complexities threaded between him and you."

There is no light in this windowless room but the artificial one overhead, unnatural as much else in the Matoba clan, but even in its honeyed glow Seiji swears he sees actual threads, shimmering where the light hits them, stretching from Shuuichi's fingers to his. Their tautness shivers, looser by a breath. He blinks, and there is nothing but he in this tidied forgotten room with a false Shuuichi bound and simpering in front of him.

"I have had many years to study humans and their relationships to each other," the kitsune says, appraising Seiji like he is wrought of gold, "and I must say, how you two are is one of the most peculiar cases I've yet seen. Small wonder this man's emotions are in such tumult."

Seiji's eye is trained on him, and he puts all the predation he can into it, but even he knows the true beast here is the kitsune.

"However," not-Shuuichi continues, head tilted aside, hair fluttering, "these are not all good emotions. Yes... there are _contradictions_ here. Love and hate and all of that lying in between." Its smile is more of a maw about to swallow its prey. "Whatever did you do to him?"

"If you can read that much into him," Seiji says, putting on a smile of his own – but thin, but tight, "surely you can see for yourself."

Not-Shuuichi shakes its head. "Ah, if only. I cannot read thoughts. I feel impressions of memories and whatever the present consciousness I smother can flit out. But these memories, they come to me like... works of art, I suppose would be your human equivalent. I see them in stills and interpret the artist's intent. Though it is not often I am wrong."

"Then you know what happened."

"That I do, but not the reasons. Nor your memory of it. Nor how your heart churns." It droops Shuuichi's head too far to the side. "Is it as unstable as his?"

He does not deign the thing with a reply, but it only incites it, gleeful.

"It is, isn't it? There is something here. Mutual, perhaps, in its good as in its bad. And neither of you has made anything of it. This has lasted years; I feel the unrest in this man's blood. There, he lets it fester."

"Your tricks won't work on me," Seiji says. It is what he must say, regardless of the years-old churning intensified at its mention from Shuuichi's lips. Even though it's not him, even though Seiji knows it is not him, his gut roils.

The youkai heeds him no mind. "If I am him, would it satisfy you?"

This is not Shuuichi; the voice is too mocking, too cruel, too much fire in the blood. This is not Shuuichi, because he would never dare suggest easing out the tension fraught between them. This is not Shuuichi because he'd never look at him with such eyes.

"I see it in you," not-Shuuichi-but-almost-Shuuichi says. "You want Natori. You want me. But you cannot or will not act on your desire."

This is not Shuuichi and it is as close to him that Seiji would ever be.

"Poor little rich boy," not-Shuuichi laments with an imitation of a smile. "All this wealth and power and no one to love you. You wear a mask like many of us youkai whom you so hate and you think that indifference your true face. But when this year ends, will you believe yourself to have been happy?" It leans as far forward into the chair as the ropes, digging into his clothes and exposed skin, allow. "Have you ever been?" he asks, flames curling from his mouth red and pointed as autumn's fallen leaves, and Seiji breathes them in, their swirling incessant in his chest.

Seiji retracts a step. Any closer and he'll be burned. "You're even more annoying than Natori himself," he tells it, because it is an _it_. He has to exorcise it soon; why did he allow himself to be goaded into conversation; it cannot be as pathetic as it being Shuuichi possessed that makes him hesitant to end this.

"What will you do if I keep talking? Exorcise me? I'm perfectly aware of this possibility. You will fail to bring Natori back if you do. But why would you want to when you can have me?" He– it peers demurely up to Seiji. "You're strangely beautiful; I would not mind. Would you prefer I act more like him?" And like the flicker of a candle by the slightest exhale, Shuuichi's expression shifts to one Seiji is privately intimate with: stubborn, eyes pridefully turned away, a downwards pull at his lip. "Is this what you want," he says, that _voice_, "Seiji?"

Seiji steals the distance left between them as swiftly as the kitsune had swept into Shuuichi's soul, but he takes Shuuichi's face in his hands with far more fervor than a youkai's flames of possession. "Don't call me that."

"But," is the reply, with all the innocent hurt only Shuuichi can wear, "it's your name."

"You do not call me that anymore."

"Maybe I should."

"Be quiet," Seiji says, the command it was crafted to be weakening to a plea with Shuuichi's face perfect in his hands, his skin far too hot, but that could simply be from Seiji himself.

And that voice, coming even softer. "Or else what?"

All the wealth and power in the universe could not have taught Seiji how to love. He doesn't know what he is doing; he's never kissed anyone. He can only do what his body compels him to, that ageless urge he's killed time and time again of pressing his mouth to Shuuichi's. It's inelegant and tense and improper in the truest sense of the word, because this isn't even Shuuichi.

But it's the closest Seiji will ever have to him, and so he takes it. With a mad heart and madder need, he takes it. His kimono whispers loudly as he slides sideways back to Shuuichi's lap, hands holding him in place where ropes, chafing his skin where he moves to accommodate Seiji, do not bind him. Being bound, there is little to nothing Shuuichi – the _youkai_ – can do to pull his body to Seiji; he struggles under the ropes and yet he smirks returning this kiss.

To Seiji's dismay and self-disgust, it's exciting. He doesn't know what he is doing but this passion rising from the bottom up is the only feeling that has ever mattered; it sends licks of heat from where Shuuichi's mouth meets his to where his thigh, despite being covered, burns as if bare where Shuuichi is pressed to him. This is what he has been missing all these years self-sworn to distance.

"Seiji," breathes Shuuichi in between fierce kisses, "you should unbind me."

A stronger candle flicker, the thin shadow it casts obvious in its shifting – but now from Seiji, lips paused above Shuuichi's. They make him think, those words; in less than a second, multiple tangled thoughts unravel and stretch, ordered, and Seiji is returned to himself. To a new game.

He does not kiss not-Shuuichi again, but he does speak so his lips brush his, in an illusion of his continued surrender to vice. "Why?"

"Don't you want me to touch you?" In its limited range of motion, its wrist can only swivel up to touch fingertips to Seiji's knee, and how they singe him. "To be in you?"

"You don't know what I want," he says, pushing his desires to where nothing, not even himself, may see them.

"I _want_ to know." 

Seiji tucks his hands into his sleeves, pulling back from their obscene closeness. This youkai is intelligent; it weaves its words into a tapestry to suffocate the listener. It speaks with purpose. This much he can tell – this much he, too, knows how to do. To glean his desires, wherever they may hail from, would mean for _him_ to be possessed. "Why do you want to possess me?" he finally asks.

The laugh that comes out of Shuuichi's mouth is his voice, but it is not him. It crackles like burning wood; it pulls his eyes to narrow slits. "You pick up on things swiftly, don't you? Of course I would much prefer your body to this one." It shrugs Shuuichi's arms as best it can. "This man is strong, but _you_! I sensed your power ripple off you when I was within that woman. I wanted you immediately and was hoping you'd assist in the exorcism so I could take you, but you did not. Although I suppose it ended up in my favor you fumbled the circle, as it let me possess him and speak to you." Its grin is wild. "Who wouldn't want to dwell within such a vessel? Especially one as powerful as myself?"

A tiny line forms between Seiji's eyebrows, but the eyepatch conceals it.

The kitsune must take his silence for curiosity to know more. "You have seen my power thus. I am capable of speech. Of rational thought. Of suppressing consciousness, even that of an exorcist like this one!" It tips Shuuichi's head forward to him. "And I have felt your power, Matoba-sama. Saying the name now, I am reminded of how we youkai speak of it in fear and awe! You carry blood of old power, and I older yet. It is known that the Matoba clan can no longer bind youkai to their service, but..." It trails off. Seiji knows Shuuichi's eyes to be the color of days-old blood. The look Shuuichi is giving him glistens with the freshness and ferocity of something just gutted and devoured.

"But what of binding a youkai to ourselves?" Seiji guesses, words like a cloth to wipe away the filth just spoken.

"What about it?" not-Shuuichi asks. "If I inhabit you, your beloved is free of me, and you will have gained quite the youkai. Your power and mine combined would be a force to be reckoned with. History will speak of the Matoba clan head Seiji, who vanquished youkai with one of their own at his very soul's command. There will be no one to go against you – you will stand as the greatest of the exorcists, and your family's renown renewed. All I ask for," it says, in a simmering tone, "is your body. An obvious choice, no?"

Seiji remembers how his good eye had traced the incantation yellowed on its ancient tome, tiring itself within its socket until he could see the characters behind his lid – as he sees them now, closing his eyes. And then he opens them, smiling. "Yes."

Not-Shuuichi simpers. "Then–"

Seiji flicks his wrists down, a succession of paper charms hidden up his sleeves beforehand sliding down his arms and immediately pressed to Shuuichi's body. One, two, three, four. For each stroke in the _water_ character to banish a creature of fire. For the sound of death.

"Everything I have done," Seiji says, "I have done by my own hands. My power is my own." He grips not-Shuuichi's too-hot chin in his hand. "You think I would debase myself into being a youkai's creature? If this is what you have gathered, your near-immortality is a waste. You have nothing I want except Shuuichi-san, and I will have him returned now." He stands, mighty as newly forged iron.

Not-Shuuichi's eyes widen, pupils enlarged as if staring into its own flames. "You cannot exorcise me! This man's spirit could be ruptured!"

"It could," Seiji acknowledges, "but he is stronger than to let a 'could' become a 'will.'"

"You would take such a chance?!" the youkai spits, teeth flashing, lashing against the ropes. "You are as vile as is rumored! As heartless! Do you not _care_ for this man?! Do you not want greater power to restore the fear onto your name?!"

"I will not repeat myself twice. Begone."

The kitsune tries one last desperate plea, but Seiji's memorized incantation drowns it out – mostly, because its screams weave in between the spell words and into Seiji's ears, Shuuichi's voice underlying a bestial cry, and because it is not Shuuichi who screams but the thing using him for a puppet Seiji's mouth does not stop moving. To even breathe during this incantation will break it. The words are a mighty cascade quenching the kitsune's flames bursting forth in one mad howl. Seeing Shuuichi outlined by fire, even a ghostly one that cannot burn him, and doing nothing but speaking with a blueblood's confidence – it takes as much concentration to not permit even a hint of a waver in his voice nor to disturb the serenity of the divine gesture that will banish this youkai.

Through the white-hot ghost flames and the blue glow of the circle on the paper-strewed floor, the wards on Shuuichi's body remain unscathed, their characters gleaming as if freshly written. Shuuichi shakes violently, the ropes at his limbs chafing his skin. The scream that comes out of his mouth is fully the youkai's pain and rage, an animalistic thing that curdles in Seiji's ears.

"–and to thy flesh thou shalt _return_!" he finishes, the holiness of his incantation rushing like water around the kitsune's dying sputter of light, its cries smothered for good. A fox-shaped brightness is expelled from Shuuichi, and in the cleansed air of this holy room, it is snuffed, smoke disappearing into itself.

Seiji drops to Shuuichi's side. Shuuichi is limp as the puppet he'd been, the ropes at his chest, arms, and legs the only thing keeping him seated. Seiji cups his cheek, pressing a thumb to the pulse point at his neck. Weakly it beats, but it is there.

He undoes the ropes, starting with Shuuichi's legs, adjusting him as he works so he does not topple over. When he is free, Seiji carefully settles him on the scorched-paper ground, pausing before setting his head on his lap. The tension Shuuichi hoards when Seiji is near him is not there because he cannot see him. Peaceful tiredness lines his face, his breathing slow and even.

"You're much cuter when you're quiet," Seiji says, part of him thinking this will annoy Shuuichi into waking.

The only reply he gets is the flutter of a paper, upset by the kitsune's fiery storm, just settling.

Seiji leans back against the wall with a sigh, weary of his own. Memorizing the spell had been no small feat, and the concentration required to speak it flawlessly in one breath has sapped him of strength. As has this ordeal. He looks down at Shuuichi, unaware Seiji is holding him at anything but at arm's length.

"You are as helpless now as when we were young," Seiji tells him, though the scolding is not there. He smiles, genuine, despite the unconscious presence of the one who brings it forth. "But, I think, so am I."

The kitsune, in all its hungry flames, has robbed Shuuichi of his body heat. Shivers prickle down his body.

Seiji tenderly puts Shuuichi down to peek his head out the door, ordering a sentinel shiki to retrieve a servant. He sits while he waits for them, pulling Shuuichi to his chest, cradling the back of his head and the small of his back as he shares his body heat, steadily increasing like this.

When the servant walks in, she blinks at the scene: papers in disarray, an empty chair, ropes, two men in the fickle hands of fate thus entwined. "Matoba-sama?"

"I've exorcised a kitsune from him. He's very cold; I need blankets, heating pads. Anything of the sort."

She nods and darts away.

He flicks his eyes down at Shuuichi. Has he ever been this at peace? And this after being exorcised. Should he wake and find himself in Seiji's arms, what a fit he'd throw. Seiji's smirk is disingenuous. "Wake up, Natori-san," he says. "You're embarrassing yourself."

Seiji keeps looking at him. At the thin skin of his lids. It quavers oddly. Vaguely, he remembers this is a sign of deep sleep, that Shuuichi's eyes are moving in his dream world.

_I wonder_, Seiji thinks, _what is there_.

The servant returns with a heap of blankets and pillows to make a comfortable futon. She moves as if to set it up, but Seiji dismisses her. He's not made a bed in years; domestic frivolities materialized of their own for him. His hands are clumsy as he fluffs the blankets. They're clumsier yet as he sets Shuuichi down and tucks him in. When he is done, he studies him a moment, swaddled thickly in things that belong to the Matoba clan in a Matoba manor room with the Matoba clan head responsible for all this at his side.

Similar to a time long ago. But this is even more at Seiji's mercy. This is his terrain.

For the stutter in his heart, it doesn't feel that way.

It is useless to stay here; Shuuichi will wake up eventually and, being who he is, cause a ruckus as he tries to get an explanation before fleeing. But Seiji's room is in another wing entirely. If anyone is to explain anything, it would be best if it is him. If anyone is to see Shuuichi first, it should be him.

He takes a blanket and pillow for himself, resting his cheek to it, watching Shuuichi. It must be no later than the afternoon, but lethargy is creeping into his bones.

"Well," he tells him, "I'll be here." 

* * *

When Seiji wakes several hours later, Shuuichi is still asleep.

_Or dead_, he thinks, hollowly, but then Shuuichi's chest goes up, then gently down.

Yes, the exorcism had been rash; as strong as Shuuichi's spiritual power is, and as honest as Seiji was in his belief of it, his soul had been in the verge between this world and the next. Once Nanase hears of it she'll spare no unkindness. _What if the boy had died?_ he can hear her say. The clan is influential, but could they have covered up a death? A death of someone like Natori Shuuichi?

_Thankfully, there will be__ no need of that_, he thinks, reaching out a hand to Shuuichi's forehead. Warm, humanly so. That's good. He removes the heavier blankets off him.

Shuuichi's eyes open, blearily. Lovely rusted blood. They flit to Seiji's, whose hand is poised by Shuuichi's legs from where he'd taken the topmost blanket off him, and in meeting his eye, in slowly understanding in the situation, his eyes focus. Shuuichi sits up, yelling.

"Good evening to you too, Natori-san," Seiji says, putting his hand to his side. "I do hope you didn't frighten the entire household."

Shuuichi covers his face with a hand, the other clutching a blanket. "I was– you–"

"I exorcised the youkai possessing you." He pauses, recognizing something awkward in the room. And he ignores it. "You're welcome."

"You could have killed me!" Shuuichi says, agitated, and the words aloud seem to bewilder him. He drops his hand from his face to his shirt, over his heart, fingers bunching on the slept-in fabric to wrinkle it further. "You could have killed me," he says, quieter.

Seiji considers him as he is now, upset but breathing, the fire his blood makes as it keeps him alive his own. And then he thinks of Shuuichi with none of that, simply lying there unmoving, and he cannot make himself believe it for death but for sleep. "You wouldn't have died."

"You don't know that," Shuuichi says, glare weakened by something like pain.

"Do you not believe in your own power?"

The glare dwindles to nothing. His lips part, prettily, but he says nothing – but from his confused eyes, Seiji does not need to hear him speak to know his thoughts.

"You're much too stubborn yet softhearted," Seiji says, "and you rarely think before acting. You pull trouble to you or else willingly throw yourself into it." He pauses, smiling a little at Shuuichi's restored frown. "But," he starts again, "there can be strength in those, too." He slides his hands under his thighs, looking to the side – nothing important is there; it is simply somewhere he won't see Shuuichi look back at him. "You have significant spiritual power. You were inherently capable of maintaining your sense of self in the youkai's presence, but coupled with your stubbornness and pride in who you've become, it was impossible for you to lose to it." He turns back to him. "My blood is not as cold as you think it is."

The confusion in Shuuichi's eyes has only intensified. Seiji's organs wring to a single rope, and like a rope pulled they drag down his lip. How foolish was he to think Shuuichi would believe his rare display of honesty? Shuuichi is parsing his words for another meaning, for something that, if missed, Seiji would mock him for as if he were a child. Because Seiji has done so before. His reflection in Shuuichi's eyes disgusts him.

Both of Shuuichi's hands go to his face, and mercifully Seiji does not see himself in his gaze anymore. "I got possessed," he says, muffled and miserable and embarrassed.

"It was a powerful youkai."

Shuuichi splays his fingers so his eyes, distrustful as Seiji knows them to be, peek through. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

Ah. It might have been. He shrugs, elegantly as he can. "Make of it what you will."

"I have my pride as an exorcist too, you know! This is mortifying."

"No one but you and I know," Seiji says, and he really is trying to make Shuuichi feel better, isn't he. He purses his mouth, more so when Shuuichi drops his hands, revealing a pink face, because both of them do indeed know what had happened.

"Whatever the youkai told you about me," Shuuichi says, strained, "was a lie."

_Then why your embarrassment, Shuuichi-san? _"I lied to it as well. Kitsune are infamous for their trickery; it is best to counter them with the same. Thank you for the reminder." Another lie. But human.

Shuuichi looks at him, unsure what to make of him, attempting to discern his intent. Is he being facetious? Pitying? Considerate? Shuuichi can look as much as he pleases. He will never find the answer – Seiji has perfected the face he presents, and it is not going to be solved here and now by a person.

"I know you lied," is what Shuuichi says, eventually, "though I won't pretend I know why you decided to take the blame for my mistake in the exorcism. The circles were drawn right; I saw them. It was– it was me who messed up the incantation. I got– I mean, I was going to pretend I wanted to sleep with a lovely young woman I have no interest in! I lied all night and took advantage of her feelings! I dragged you along! I was... I wasn't as focused as I could have been."

Had Seiji been standing, he would have swayed imperceptibly. It hadn't been him who'd condemned Shuuichi. Shuuichi had been distracted of his own. Shuuichi, large as his heart is, had no interest in the very person he'd risked his life to help.

Shuuichi sighs. "But I guess you pretending it was your fault made the kitsune believe you were weaker than what you present yourself to be. Or so I'm guessing. I never know why you do half of what you do."

Neither will he solve his reasons for their intimacy, however fleeting it had been. If he brings it up at all.

_He won't_, Seiji thinks. They will pretend nothing had happened, that they were victims to their circumstances, that somehow kissing was part of Seiji's scheme to exorcise the kitsune. There is a bit of truth in those possibilities certainly buzzing in Shuuichi's head. It is but a sliver of the whole truth. And even this sliver is too much to reveal.

Shuuichi puts a hand flat on the papered ground as he brings himself to his full height. Seiji stands as well, righting Shuuichi by his elbow as he wobbles. Their eyes flick to one another, and just as Seiji had been thinking of Shuuichi's thoughts of all this, he can see Shuuichi had done the same for him. Seiji quickly withdraws his hand; Shuuichi quickly takes a step away from him; they both look in the direction opposite the other.

"You shouldn't have done that," Shuuichi says.

Seiji cranes his head to him and sees he's put his fingers across his mouth.

Seiji's top teeth unwittingly catch his lip as he speaks. "I should not have," he agrees, detached, the oak tree that pays no attention to flowers; he is the head of the Matoba clan and he will not wallow in sentimentality of hope. An apology is at the forefront of his mind, dangling down his throat, but it will not fall to rest on his tongue so it may be said.

Shuuichi has not dropped his hand from his mouth, and so it further muffles his already quiet words when he asks, "Did you... mean it?"

There are two things he could be referring to.

One: Seiji's pretense of an apology cloaked as acknowledgment for his wrongs.

Or two: that Seiji had kissed Shuuichi at all.

The simple way out – the coward's way out – is to assume Shuuichi means the former. Seiji will try a smile and slip out an empty provocation and it will be the two of them as they have been for years, endless bickering weighed heavily one-sided. They'll exchange emptier pleasantries, courtesy mandated even that basely for people like them, and part until their next fortunately unfortunate encounter.

But he could tell the truth. There is no good reason for it. He just could, and then reap the consequences of all but admitting to the one who was once a boy lost in a forest, and then always lost in Seiji's periphery, that being fifteen and in love was not much different from being twenty-two and in love when it was directed to the same person. Seiji had grown taller, he'd gained some things and lost others, he'd witnessed many days darken to nights, he'd seen Shuuichi and then imprinted him to his soul. Scrub as he might – as he'd attempted – he could not wear his image away. The distance that had inevitably swelled between them served him in deluding himself he had. Apart, he could declare it was no longer foolish love, simply the memory of it he clung to. Then Shuuichi would stumble into his life, just as unintendedly as they'd met, and all of Seiji's certainties crumble.

"What would you do," Seiji finds his voice usurping his better thoughts, and he cannot stop the words no more than he could autumn's tint on leaves, "if I told you I'd meant it?" Cloaking and combining his options into a hypothetical is perhaps the cowardliest path he could have chosen. But here he is.

Shuuichi's hand slowly goes up to his hair, fingers mussing it. His eyes are on a point further away than this room allows, and his expression more distant than that. "I'd ask you if you were trying to trick me into an answer."

"What if I wasn't?"

Nothing possesses Shuuichi anymore, but there are stars in his eyes flickering to Seiji's singular one. Those eyes, it seems to Seiji, wish for something.

"What if," Seiji says, cherry blossoms seasons out of date fluttering in his stomach, "I genuinely wanted to know?"

The ripening pause could fit five of their lifetimes within it.

"I'd tell you that I didn't really mind what you did." Shuuichi preoccupies himself with flattening a wrinkle on his shirt. "Not really."

"I see," he says, the quietest he's spoken yet, and he means it more than Shuuichi realizes. He sees that neither of them can lay out the truth; they will dance around what they think the other says because to turn emotions into words is to make them real, and to make these things real is to acknowledge they have not the strength they claim. To be vulnerable is to lose.

And yet the pit in his stomach is not uncomfortably filled. Something thrives there as perfectly as fire had within Shuuichi.

Shuuichi shuffles toward the door, still not meeting Seiji's eye. "I should... be going."

"Why?" Again with his voice's independence. With conscious effort, Seiji manages implacability.

Now Shuuichi does look at him – but briefly, lasting as long as the skitter of his lizard down his neck. "I don't belong here."

Because he is not part of their clan. Because those who are sometimes whisper of the ashes strewn between the noblest Matoba and the last Natori. Because he will not join – he'd declared as much once.

_And if I asked again? _Seiji wonders, and promptly discards it. _I already know what the answer would be_. Threads had bound them earlier with their begrudging roundabout admittances, but threads are threads. Flimsy. Impermanent.

"Would you at least like dinner before you leave?" He almost offers a bath and change of clothes but catches himself in time, judging that Shuuichi would flush at his innocuous suggestion, assuming it for something else.

"I'm fine, thanks," he says, though he absentmindedly touches his stomach, last night's suit rumpled.

Seiji tilts his head up in what passes for a nod. "I'll see you out."

He leads Shuuichi down his ancient manor's wood-and-paper halls, musing how the entire place could have been kindle to Shuuichi's fiery possession.

They pass his shiki and servants and clan members, who pay him their respects, and where they'd kept yesterday's question of Shuuichi's feverish presence to themselves, today Seiji can see in their reverent downward gazes the questions of what had occurred and why he leaves. Questions they'll never have answers to.

Autumn holds the evening in its gently cool hand, rich blue inking down on the sky sharpening the red of leaves. Seiji puts his hands inside his ample sleeves; Shuuichi crosses his arms upon realizing his suit's pockets will not fit his hands. Seiji suppresses a smile at it.

"So," Shuuichi says. Then he says nothing, punctuated by him stepping down from the engawa to the gravel beneath. _Crunch_, disturbing the peace in the forest and the one precarious between them. "I suppose I should thank you."

Seiji shrugs, smooth as water. He will not force it out of Shuuichi. Not on this occasion.

Shuuichi searches the perfect September sky for something. Seiji admires it too, only looking down when he hears, "Thank you." It is so sincerely said, nothing like the harsh tone Shuuichi affects for him, that briefly Seiji thinks he addressed someone else. No; those words, that kindness is for him.

"You're welcome," he says, because this is what he has been raised to do.

Shuuichi's rubbing his elbows, nodding, but it's not a reply so much as something to do as he says, quite gracelessly, "Bye, then."

The wind-rustled trees, dripping red if they retain anything at all, arc over Shuuichi's retreating frame, near-black like the night that had spirited him in, head and shoulders drooped as though weighed down, lonely despite being surrounded by all this life.

"Shuuichi-san," Seiji calls out.

Shuuichi picks his head up and turns around, and if he'd heard the mishap, it doesn't show. His name has been said, and he heeds it.

"If you should ever have need of my help again," Seiji says after a moment to gather his thoughts as truthful as he will allow himself to be, "you know where to reach me."

Shuuichi's smile is small, but it is there. "Yeah." His back is taller as he walks down the gravel path, steps crunching on the broken rocks like they're marred by frost.

And Seiji's eye is on him, his heart thrown out to him unwanted, each step away an offering to their unrelenting distance, seeing him off with these unspoken burdens.

Near the end of the path, Shuuichi halts mid-stride. There he lingers, to Seiji's puzzlement, before whirling around. A paler autumnal color has fallen on his cheeks, and he curls loose fists, fiercely meeting Seiji's eye, blurting, "Dinner would be nice!"

The words should not echo in a space as open as this, yet they do.

A little laugh makes its escape from Seiji's lips. It is not of malice but marvel. Delight, too, it feels like. He angles his body toward the manor. "Then hurry before I invite better company, instead."

"I'm not bad company," Shuuichi grumbles, hastily returning, the gravel's crunch merrier.

Seiji hums through a private smile, letting Shuuichi head inside first, talking amiably the whole way. Their newfound conversation will not kill the night today, and neither will it do so tomorrow, but maybe, when they can stretch it endlessly, it will one day.

**Author's Note:**

> -[matsuo basho](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_Bash%C5%8D) was an edo era poet. he was gay. matoba knew what he was doing. 'kiyoshi' is apparently [another reading](https://jisho.org/search/%E9%9D%99%E5%8F%B8) of the kanji for 'seiji'  
-i wove a few of basho's works into the fic bc i'm Like That. [one](https://66.media.tumblr.com/990ab2209ad502d71aa27cc778c15c98/ce93abb7a2f1f5e4-c9/s640x960/86c5af2c0c0b10ccd9004ec6ddd8081936b3f7ef.jpg), [two](https://66.media.tumblr.com/50e5187459fe77e6ea8a599da6009566/332ef25539a9182c-df/s640x960/abacad80aaf81889d1270ddb4e29a3d7044b4b14.jpg), [three](https://66.media.tumblr.com/fd85bced944ae3d15f6483bdd85c586d/5bb889be4bb5fa1e-c3/s640x960/b8c5990c46a1677e1a383f6c58f3e9b6fecd7e6a.jpg), [four](https://66.media.tumblr.com/926d7d920608ddfd76549707c73d6382/e33d6730ec593136-80/s640x960/e6b1ebbed43a19c7cb1dba60cf642c7bad616c79.jpg), [five](https://66.media.tumblr.com/eca89b290f221a8466b352056c5c0c74/702492edc408312f-60/s640x960/1304297f7d6019525c3e28d420aee9e8f7f70211.jpg), [six](https://66.media.tumblr.com/e3675d10c4331061afe82e810910e044/65b6ffb370e6dd61-49/s640x960/68c28bbde53f2d3b3c92e025ad7bd9bc76adb9c8.jpg), [seven](https://66.media.tumblr.com/e56ff6828779282664fa80ab40dea27a/1c9187412799f1f4-09/s640x960/fb6e7229a66ddbeb57ccf0bfbe021a658820d98f.jpg), [eight](https://66.media.tumblr.com/40121e517dd3428b09e2cc435ba7cfe7/cdba12e6643e69f1-67/s640x960/ee387d89a755d2acc3d3af3612e14a5841e80105.jpg). all came from [this](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2183600.Basho) book  
-the kanji for 'water' has [four strokes](https://jisho.org/search/%23kanji%20%E6%B0%B4). the word for 'death' sounds like [one of the words for the number 'four'](https://www.omniglot.com/language/numbers/japanese.htm). if midorikawa won't give me exorcist lore i'll make it up myself  
-title inspired by st. vincent's '[new york](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPqUvy1vYU)'. barring the eponymous setting of the song, it is v natomato-core


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